


The Curious Incident of the Time-Traveling Stegosaurus During Tea Time

by viviandarkbloom



Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:51:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5414108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viviandarkbloom/pseuds/viviandarkbloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cracktastic AU, not to be taken seriously. At all. And once again, proofreading was performed under the influence of two glasses of red followed by spiked eggnog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Maybe you were a Nazi in a past life

Caroline’s mother is, as they say, a dark horse.

Currently she is a dark horse in a dark house, as the electricity has gone out in the guesthouse where she lives. This is Caroline’s doing: She has cut off the power supply in a childishly banal yet nonetheless effective act of retribution against her mother’s proclamation that she was marrying some tweedy old daft ex-boyfriend she knew over 50 years ago and with whom, thanks to the majestic prowess of Facebook, she had become reacquainted. As much as Caroline loves the internet for its softcore lesbian porn and vast recesses of knowledge on everything from creating one’s own organic fruit and vegetable wash to in-depth character analysis of _Lovejoy,_ like everything else technological interconnectedness had its downside and hearing her mother proclaim eternal undying love for some old wankpot is more than she is equipped to deal with sans cabernet sauvignon at the moment.

The guesthouse blackout has not, however, affected Celia Dawson’s texting capabilities: _You are an effing twat,_ she texts Caroline. _My frozen yogurt will melt._

Caroline ignores this as she goes about the process of vetting Mr. Butterbean—she glances at the file that her research associates have compiled and corrects herself—Mr. Buttershaw. In the chiaroscuro atmosphere of her study, she leans back in a leather chair, steeples her fingers as a villain in a bad 1970s film would do, longs for a fluffy kitty to complete the scenario although all that fur on her cashmere jumper would be troublesome, and gazes upon her dubious research associates—nay, why be so formal?—her sons. With a limited budget one had to make do. She has high hopes for William; she imagines him someday ensconced as the head of MI-5 even though the reality might turn out that, like his father, he will end up a second-rate writer cranking out pointless poetry chapbooks and managing a Starbucks. Lawrence, she assumes, will end up in prison or be the next Rupert Murdoch. Or both. Either way managing a Starbucks would be a step up for him.

She taps a fat manila folder. “So this is everything?”

“Everything I found,” William says, with a pointed glance at his brother. “Basically, nothing troublesome. Kindly old gentleman with a heart condition, plays online poker, fond of bawdy jokes, daughter is alcoholic park ranger of ill repute, grandson is an expert video gamer.”

Caroline turns to Lawrence. “And you?”

“Well.” Lawrence cracks his knuckles and Caroline tries not to groan as her bullshit meter surges into the red. “My research goes deep, much much deeper than Wilma’s here. To truly understand this man, we must trace his origins back to the very beginning. For is it not true, one does not know the man unless one knows from whence he came?”

“What did I do to deserve you?” Caroline wonders aloud.

“Maybe you were a Nazi in a past life?” William speculates.

Dismayed, Caroline frowns. “Really?”

“Well, one really high up. Like Goebbels or Goering.”

Ah, William. Dear boy. He always knows how to make her feel better.

Lawrence clears his throat. “Excuse me.”

Caroline sighs, waves at him to continue.

“Very well then. I know you will scoff, both of you, but you will be truly astounded when I tell you what I have uncovered.”

Caroline starts to pour the evening’s first glass of wine; it feels like a long night is ahead of her. “Anytime, darling.”

Lawrence rubs his hands together. “The name _Buttershaw_ is actually Olde Norse English for _shag bandit._ ”

William closes his eyes. “You are such a dick. You’re totally making that up.”

“Settle down, Wilhelmina!”

“Will you stop calling me girl names, you closet case!”

They start fighting, weakly bitchslapping one another precisely like the gormless teenage boys they are. And just like their father. She sighs. How lonesome it is to be the only jiu-jitsu expert in the family, she thinks. Caroline peruses the file again. “Is he really a shag bandit?” she asks. “I can’t have my mother marrying a shag bandit.”

“I don’t think so,” William says. As he and Lawrence tumble to the floor in mutual combat, he manages to get Lawrence in a headlock. “There’s no evidence of it. Seems like his _daughter_ is the shag bandit, though.”

Caroline raises an eyebrow. She can appreciate a female shag bandit. “Oh.”

“Don’t say ‘oh’ like that,” William calls from the floor. “I know what that means. I know what you’re thinking.”

“What?” Caroline attempts a look of wide-eyed innocence.

“Don’t you ‘what’ me! You are always attracted to these drunken wrecks. Like Dad. I thought that would change with Kate because she’s like, normal and not a walking disaster, but no—”

She leans back in the chair, swirls the wine in its glass. “Is there a photo of the shag bandit daughter in the file?”

“No,” William says, both to his mother and to Lawrence, who is trying to chew off his ear Tyson-style.

She picks up the file again. “Liar.”

In the file resides a newspaper clipping of one Gillian Greenwood—heroic park ranger, grinning broadly and looking all windblown and outdoorsy like she should be in a Cotswold outerwear catalog or a herpes ad—under this headline: LOCAL PARK RANGER RESCUES EWE AFTER DRINKING BOTTLE OF GIN. But did this mean the ewe drank the gin or the park ranger did? Oh, the delicious ambiguities of the English language. And oh, how pretty the park ranger’s eyes—Caroline scans the article and confirms that yes, said park ranger was the consumer of vast quantities of gin. But that did not prevent her from rescuing the injured ewe from a gully by strapping the beast to a makeshift stretcher made out of duct tape and an old Newcastle United kit and hauling it up a mudslide during a rainstorm. Apparently Gillian Greenwood is the MacGyver of Yorkshire.

Money quote from the article: _“I hate people but I like sheep,” says Gillian Greenwood, who works with the public every day._

“ _In_ teresting,” Caroline murmurs aloud.

“No, it’s not interesting!” William shouts. The tide has turned: Lawrence now sits on his chest while attempting to drop a projectile of phlegm in his face. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but my research indicates she may have had it off with Dad!”

“What? Oh damn it.” Caroline tosses the file on the desk. “That man has to ruin everything for me.” Pouting, she folds her arms and watches as William tries to strangle his brother with his own tie. Still, she cannot help but wonder about the possibility. “Okay, but, I mean, if she’s open to it, why not a little—”

“Mum!” shouts William. “Do you really need for things to get any _more_ complicated?”

 


	2. Jesus in an anorak

Things are complicated.

Caroline is freshly divorced from her idiot sod husband and trying to wrangle custody of the wine cellar contents while continuing to sleep with her ex-fiancée, Kate, even after they broke up over a disagreement concerning place settings for the wedding. (Kate wanted pine cones with twine tags, Caroline wanted hand-lettered vellum cards composed in Latin and created by a Franciscan monk who resides at a monastery that hosted a retreat she had attended called “Women Over Forty Who Overdrink and Overthink,” a gathering that did not really stop her from overdrinking and overthinking and also failed to reverse the aging process as well.) She cannot help it that Kate is pretty—actually, seriously beautiful and damn near out of her league—and, like some mythic, powerful heroine in a Greek play, displays a weakness for Caroline that reveals a profound flaw of character.

The most recent backsliding into sex occurs at Caroline’s place. The afterglow consists of Caroline listening to Kate’s gentle sighs of recrimination, the sighs that say _Oh Christ I’m a knobhead for sleeping with this knobhead again_ as she struggles to not fall asleep because she thinks she’d like to ask Kate to move back in again, but her futile attempts at composing the request in her head are derailed by the niggling thought that she should not have cried “oh sweet fancy Moses” at the height of orgasm.

“I should tell you,” Kate begins.

Caroline yawns. “What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh.” How to react, she wonders, to the news that your ex is pregnant while you are lying in bed with her after habitual guilty sex. “Congratulations” seems to be the thing to say, and so she says it.

“Thanks,” Kate says.

“So it took, then?”

“Yeah.”

The plan, which Caroline had never really been on board with, was for Kate to be impregnated by an old college ex-boyfriend, some epic twatnoodle named Greg who looks like Jesus in an anorak.

“I thought something was different,” Caroline says.

“Really?” Kate sounds pleased. “You mean, like a glow?”

“Well, actually, some thickness around the waist—”

“God.” Kate pinches her brow. “You never change, you know? Thank you for reminding me once again why I broke up with you.” She rises from the bed. Caroline has never met anyone who so successfully combines grace of movement with elegance of insult. No wonder she fell so hard.

“No, wait—I’m sorry.” Desolate, Caroline watches her perfect, retreating backside. “Come back.”

“Look, this is just insane.” Kate is gathering her clothes together. “It’s a bad habit. Like eating an entire cake. It’s fun and it feels good while you’re doing it but you know it’s bad for you—and if you make another bloody comment about my thick waistline, I’ll brain you with your iPad and no jury on earth will convict me because I’m officially a hormonal pregnant woman now.” She disappears into the bathroom. After a minute Caroline hears the shower go on. The sound lulls her back into sleep until she’s woken up by the sound of someone knocking on the bedroom door. Reluctantly, she get ups and throws on a robe.

William is at the door, brow furrowed so mightily she worries that, at such a tender age, he’s already developing frown lines.

“What, darling?”

“Dad’s here.”

“Again? Why does he think he still lives here? Tell him to either piss off and leave or he can sleep it off on the couch, but he better be gone by the time I leave in the morning—”

William interrupts. “Kate’s still here. She’s downstairs.” He pauses. “They’re talking.”

“Shit.” Caroline tightens the belt of her robe and rushes past him.

“They might form a support group—”

She gallops down the stairs. “You’re not funny.”

“—and maybe I’ll join it,” he calls after Caroline.

In the kitchen she finds them both. At first they do not notice her: Kate forages in the fridge for something to eat while John sits at the kitchen table, finishing off a bottle of left-over pinot noir that she had opened last night. Approvingly he smacks his lips and she becomes even more determined to hang on to the wine cellar. He will have to pry that prized bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape from her cold dead hands.

“You know,” he says to Kate, “I think you’re right—when she pulls that face she’s thinking about statistics or something _so stupidly scientific_ and boring, and it just, well, it really puts you off the pleasures of foreplay, doesn’t it?”

Kate sighs. “God, I wish I could drink right now.”

Noisily Caroline clears her throat. With the fridge door hanging open Kate looks appropriately guilty and John nearly falls off a chair and knocks over his almost-empty glass. Wine dribbles across her pristine counter and she contemplates bloody murder.

“Ah!” John decrees as he hastily blots the wine spill with a tartan scarf he had been wearing. “The Queen Bitch arises!”

“I wasn’t going to eat the leftover coq au vin, honest,” Kate blurts.

Caroline rubs her forehead. “You can have it.” She squints at John. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I here? Why am I here?” The rhetorical questions roar through the air. Arms flung wide, palms to the sky, he appeals to his audience. “My kingdom for a horse!”

“I just wanted sex and leftovers, that’s all,” Kate offers defensively.

John approves. “Modest goals are easily obtainable,” he says. “But while all of us are in gutter, some of us are looking at the stars.”

“You’ve used up your allowance of pretentious shit quotes for the day,” Caroline informs him. “Now get out.”

“I’m a searcher, Caroline. Don’t be jealous of that. You’ve never understood me. I can say quite plainly what I want, I can say the simple words: Love. Compassion. Understanding. But I don’t think you know—it lay buried here, it lay deep inside me. It’s so deep I don’t think I can speak about it.”

“Oh shit,” Kate says. Panic laces her voice and she shoots a pleading look at Caroline. “He’s quoting Kate Bush. Make him stop.”

“For God’s sake,” Caroline sighs, “will you just either say what you really want or get the fuck out already?”

As if preparing to launch into another bombastic tirade cribbed with tired old aphorisms, John takes a deep breath before sputtering, drooping, and wincing blearily at his formidable ex-wife, who suddenly feels sorry for him. “You have any ice cream?”

“Sure.” Caroline looks helplessly at Kate. “D’ya want some ice cream?” As far as romantic offerings, it’s the best she can do.

“You are so ridiculous.” Kate rolls her eyes. “How many times have I told you I’m lactose intolerant?”


	3. Pretty killer

It’s always a good day when Gillian can nick someone else’s parking spot. Today, on her way to a luncheon with her father and future stepmother, she has a thrilling Steve McQueen moment as she executes a perfect u-turn and illegally passes some posh twat in a Jeep Cherokee so that she can nab a parking spot right in front of the pub where she’s supposed to be, all the while gleefully ignoring her son, Raff, as he claws the dashboard for dear life.

Emerging triumphantly from her modest, aged Land Rover, Gillian is swaggering toward the pub and flipping off Raff as he decrees that she should never be allowed to drive anything ever again, even a bicycle, when a ferocious blonde woman blocks her path, seizes her arm, trips her, and effortlessly flips her. The earth somersaults around Gillian and she’s flat on her back, breathless and staring up at the sky. Her ass hurts. Her spine hurts. She’s having a flashback to the time she tried ecstasy at a Goldfrapp concert.

The blonde woman looming over her no longer looks furious but mortified. “Oh God, it’s you,” she blurts.

Raff squints down at his mother. “Y’all right down there, Mum? Told you, road rage would get you one of these days.”

“You’re Gillian, aren’t you?” the blonde says. “I recognize you from your photo in—never mind. I’m sorry, Gillian. So sorry. It’s just, you know, once you commit to that kind of move it’s hard to stop—”

When Gillian finally remembers how to breathe, all is pain and swearing. “Fuck. Oh fuck. Fuck.”

Raff confirms her identity. “Yep, that’s her all right. Let me guess—you’re Caroline, Celia’s daughter.”

“How did you know?”

“Celia said you were a jiu-jitsu expert with major control issues and an extreme sense of entitlement.” Raff rocks on his heels.

“Oh, you’ve met Mum then.”

“Yeah. She’s absolutely brill at _Grand Theft Auto_.”

“I have no idea what that means. And you are?”

“Raff.” He nods down at Gillian. “Her son. Alan’s grandson. I have to say, that flip was pretty killer.”

“Thank you, Raff! You’re lovely.”

To remind the oblivious of her predicament, Gillian says, “Fuck.”

A look of concern flits across Raff’s face. “Hope you didn’t hurt her.”

“Oh, she should be fine. I did a quick calculation based on estimated height and weight and flipped accordingly to minimize any potential injury and/or paralysis. As you may know, one of the founding principles of martial arts is self-defense, to use your opponent’s energy against them, the intent is not to seriously harm or do permanent damage.”

 “Yeah,” Raff says archly, “but you obviously wanted to make a point.”

“Well.” Caroline shifts uncomfortably. “She’s a twat for taking my parking space.”

“Fuck!” Gillian says.

Raff shrugs. “Guess as long as you didn’t break her liver it’s all right, ’cause she’d _really_ be screwed then.”

As if the moment necessitated further humiliation and gawping witnesses, Alan and Celia, lured by the persistent and loud siren sound of obscenity from the prone Gillian, emerge from the pub.

“What on earth is going on?” Celia demands. “Caroline! What on earth did you do now? Was that anger management retreat for nothing?”

“That was about overdrinking and overthinking, Mum.”

“Still. What have you done to this poor woman?”

“That’s not just any woman,” Alan says. “That’s my Gillian.”

“Oh, this is Gillian?” Celia coos. “Dear, it’s so lovely to finally meet you!”

All four stare down at Gillian.

“Fuck,” says Gillian.

 

 


	4. Knickers down with the vicar’s daughter

Over the years Gillian has perfected the kind of alarmingly dead-eyed, soul-shredding stare that routinely strikes fear, profound anguish, and gastrointestinal distress into the hearts of those targeted by it. The stare is composed of one part Clint Eastwood and one part Charles Bronson thrown in with a jigger of Robert DeNiro, a shot of Marty Feldman, and a delightful pinch of Joan Crawford. Typically it proves effective in keeping idiots out of her way except for the time when those two twatty girl detectives from Manchester dragged her into their HQ for an interrogation, thinking she was some sort of lesbian serial killer murdering and molesting young boys or something really ridiculous like that and the whole incident would have been worth it had Gillian been able to persuade the twat brunette detective to go out with her, but alas, her twat blonde colleague had her on a pretty tight leash and it was a no-go.

Over her Caesar salad Gillian keeps the stare trained with laser-like accuracy on the mad blonde bitch, Caroline Elliot, the daughter of the mad old bitch her father is so keen on marrying. The stare has unnerved Caroline terribly well, because she’s apologized profusely at least three times in between nervously gulping down a glass of wine.

Finally, when her father gently squeezes her hand, Gillian comes to her senses. “Gillian, lass,” he says. “Please turn off serial killer glare.”

“Please,” Caroline says. “I’m sorry. Really.”

“Yes, Gillian, dear,” Celia chimes in. “She’s really sorry. I mean, I’ve never heard her apologize so much, not since that time her father and I caught her, knickers down, with the vicar’s daughter.”

Alan turns thoughtful. “There’s a poem in there somewhere. Or very good limerick, at best.”

Caroline buries her face in her hand. “Jesus Christ, Mum.”

“Too bad you didn’t stick with her—why, it would be nice to have an in with the vicar, for our wedding.” Celia brightens. “Could you seduce her again, perhaps?”

“No, you mad old cow. I told you, I’m trying to get back together with Kate.”

“That’s the ex-fiancée,” Celia says in an aside to Gillian. “Ex-fiancée, ex-husband, she has it all, doesn’t she?”

“Except for an ex-mother,” Caroline retorts.

“Anyway, I don’t know why you bother poor Kate.” Never one to mince words, Celia goes for the jugular. “She hates you.”

Caroline turns sullen. “No she doesn’t.”

“After all the nonsense she’s put up with from you?” Celia asks.

“What, did you jiu-jitsu her too?” Gillian interjects.

Caroline, shocked and impressed that Gillian is saying something other than _fuck_ and doing something other than giving her murderously psychotic glances, is startled, and then irritated. The heat of anger turns her expression into something downright smoldering and Gillian twitches. She starts attacking her salad, while silently wishing she had ordered a burger and fries and making a mental note about the estranged fiancée and the vicar’s daughter. Not that she needs to get involved with a nutter like this.


	5. Sunday in the park with Harry

In her tender misguided youth, Gillian had a teacher who saw in her great potential. This scholarly hybrid of Mr. Chips and Miss Jean Brodie—perfectly so because he was an phlegmatic old tosser with fascist sympathies and a predilection for wearing women’s stockings under his trousers—offered to Gillian a salient piece of advice that he devoutly believed would set her on a permanent course of self-fulfillment and personal happiness: “Always follow your strengths!” Usually he said this to plaid-skirted Gillian as she was bent over potting things in the school’s greenhouse and thus she concluded that she had a talent for working with nature whilst displaying her ass to its best advantage. What career could best combine the two more than being a park ranger? Ever since the fateful morning after a New Year’s Eve party when she woke up in the local park barefoot and with a mustache drawn on her face while curled protectively around a trash bag filled with empty gin bottles—and after some bloke in a fancy overcoat said, “Happy New Year, young man” and gave her a tenner for her troubles—she knew that life in the park was for her.

She still believes this, even while shoveling shit. At the moment she is unloading fertilizer from a flatbed truck and spreading it around shrubbery near a walkway. From a supine position along a park bench her colleague, Harry, occasionally sneaks a tipple of scotch from a flask in his jacket while supervising her work. Because he is so disinclined to share libations Gillian finds him a disappointment as both as mentor and a boss, even though he is one of her father’s oldest and dearest friends. Still, she likes him and they amuse each other on a regular basis, even as this afternoon’s conversation veers away from its usual topics of women, alcohol, sexual exploits, and old films when Gillian discovers that Harry has also made the acquaintance of Caroline Elliot.

Gillian pauses mid-shovel. A dollop of fertilizer falls on her boot. “You’ve met the mad bitch?”

“Aye.” Stretched out on the bench, Harry resembles a hobo more than a responsible public servant. Which is sort of how he got hired in the first place, but that is another story. “You know she runs that organic fruit and vegetable market?”

“Free market capitalist bourgeois cunt.”

“Says the wankpot who goes to bloody Starbucks every morning. Honestly, she seems right nice, polite. Likes your dad, which is the main thing, don’t you reckon?”

“Nice? Polite? She’s insane. She jiu-jitsued me.”

“Good Christ, Gillian.” Harry sits up. “You’ve shagged her already?”

“No, you bloody old idiot. Jiu-jitsu. It’s martial arts, not a lesbian sex act.”

“Is there a difference?” Harry muses. “The act of love in all its forms, particularly the physical, frequently resembles combat—”

“You’re sounding as twatty as John.” 

“No need to be rude.”

“Sorry. But seriously, she’s demented and if my dad marries that old prune Celia I’m going to have to put up with her. I mean, I can avoid her only so much.”

“I’ll say.”

“What?”

“Think that’s her, coming up the pathway towards us.”

Like a mirage or a gin-fueled hallucination, Caroline Elliot shimmers along the walkway, striding up the incline toward her and Harry. She’s elegantly dressed in white, swaying seductively on high heels, and giving a regal toss of her head that shakes out golden strands of blonde hair so bright and electric that they are flagrant annunciations from an raucous angel of lust— _check this, yo_ —and Gillian acknowledges, _all right, she’s fit, so what_ in an effort to assuage her libido. But it doesn’t work and then she thinks maybe she should lay off the gin for a while because clearly the mere appearance of this woman is fucking so thoroughly with her head, her hormones, and her hangover that she cannot piece together an effective strategy to save herself from such a demented yet glorious creature.

Harry rises from the bench. “Knows how to make an entrance, that one.”

“Like Botticelli’s Venus, sailing in on a bloody clamshell,” Gillian mutters.

“Nice. Posh image for the posh twat.” Harry gets into the spirit of it. “How about—like Ursula Andress in _Dr. No_?” 

“Kim Novak in _Vertigo._ ”

“Rita Hayworth in _Gilda._ ”

“The baby alien in _Alien._ ”

Harry hoots with laughter.

Gillian shifts nervously. “What d’ya think she wants?”

“Nothing to do with me, that I’m certain of,” he says.

“I swear to Christ if she gets within three feet of me I’m going to throw shit on her.”

“And this is why you’re still single, Gillian.” Harry nips at his flask. “I’m going to do a walkabout.”

“Don’t leave me with her,” Gillian whines.

“You’ll be fine. Just goin’ into the bush to drain the python.”

“Thank you for that mental image,” she shouts at he retreats into the camouflage of shrubbery along the path. The nice thing about her job was that sometimes the entire park was one’s toilet. She scowls and returns to shoveling, blindly, stupidly hopeful that if she simply ignores the bitch, she’ll walk on by and go look at a tree or fall into a ravine. Apparently Caroline moves much faster in heels than the average posh twat because suddenly she’s right there, almost standing on top of Gillian while smiling like a demented weather forecaster promising sun after a tsunami and singsonging a gentle “Hi!”

Gillian jumps and cannot stop the reflexive motion of flinging shit from her shovel in Caroline’s direction. It splatters, Jackson Pollock-like, along the lower part of her dress. Gillian thinks it looks almost deliberately fashionable. She would suggest that to Caroline save for the fact she’s pretty certain she’s going to get jiu-jitsued again.

Caroline’s eyes narrow dangerously and she asks, in a menacingly flat tone that gives Gillian the chills, “Was that really necessary?” Dismayed, she stares down at her dress. “You’re not a bloody monkey in a lab, you know.”

“Sorry.” Gillian takes a generous step backward and raises her shovel. “But you stay away from me or I’ll hit you with this and call the coppers.”

Eavesdropping from the relative safety of shrubbery, Harry says, “You better hope Robbie don’t take the call.”

The mention of her cloddish ex is the cherry on the shit cake. “Sod Robbie!”

“Why is the bush talking?” Caroline asks uneasily. “Am I in the Old Testament section of the park?”

“It’s just Harry. Ignore him.”

Caroline does so as she shakes clumps of poo off the edge of her fine dress with an irritable sigh. “Look. Despite what you’re thinking, I’m not here to cause trouble. I wanted to apologize _again_ , even though I’ve already apologized about a dozen times—”

“Then why bother?” Gillian grips the shovel tighter.

“Because we should really try to smooth things over. Our parents are getting married, so for their sakes we should make an effort and try to get along, don’t you think?”

Noncommittal, Gillian shrugs.

“Come on, Gillian. Be reasonable.” Caroline smiles.

She has a nice smile. Gillian stares at a tree. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t blame you for being so angry. Really.”

Gillian shrugs.

“I was thinking.” Dress already ruined, Caroline leans lightly against the dirty truck. She crosses her legs, folds her arms, and despite the shit Gillian finds her so ridiculously attractive that she thinks there must be some airborne chemical in the fertilizer responsible for this hazy erotic spell that bestows upon this deranged woman the sophisticated and sexy veneer of an old Hollywood star. “Would you like to have dinner together? Come over to my house. I’ll cook for you.” She smiles engagingly. “What do you like?”

In this, the aural part of her delusion, Gillian imagines she sounds as sexy as Barry White instead of a mumbly middle-aged Yorkshire bint when she murmurs, “I’ll eat anything.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Caroline’s smile widens. “Friday evening, then?”

Gillian’s brain short-circuits among the multiple-choice responses that her brain offers: _Friday’s good_ and _I like food_ and _I like you_. So she ends up saying: “I like Friday food—you—you— person, you.”

“Good. I’ll text you my address.” Caroline straightens, makes a final effort to divest herself of shit crumble, and walks away, leaving Gillian muttering to herself as she stabs a pile of fertilizer.

“Is it safe to come out?” Harry asks from the bush.

“Yes, you bloody coward.”

He smirks. “So you’re having dinner with her then, eh?”

“Harry, if I could live in a world _without_ dumb men and crazy women, well—everything would be perfect, then. Perfect, I tell you. I could probably accomplish something with my life then, you know? Something grand. I’d be like a Michelangelo, or a Thomas Edison, or a Nikola Tesla—”

Harry pats her shoulder. “Let’s not get carried away, lass.”

“Benny Hill? I’d settle for being Benny Hill.”

“That’s more like it.”

Gillian sighs. “But it’s amazing.” She shakes her head. “Just amazing.”

“What? That she had the balls to ask you out whilst covered in shit?”

“No.” Gillian stabs the dirt with the spade. “That I was bloody stupid enough to agree.”

 


	6. The classic sticky wicket

“I really thought this was a date,” Gillian says.

Friday night. Approximately half an hour ago she had arrived with uncharacteristic punctuality at Caroline’s posh twat house wearing her best jeans and in possession of flowers that she had actually paid for rather than nicked from work, aka the park. Caroline had flung the door open and with a desperate kind of urgency that gave Gillian high hopes for a successful evening dragged Gillian by the hand into the kitchen, gently shoved her into a chair, and proceeded to tie her to it. Because she assumed it to be the beginning of some kind of vivid and amazingly spontaneous role-play, Gillian made only mild, perfunctory protests as Caroline expertly and carefully bound her wrists and ankles. She hadn’t pegged Caroline for this type but was willing to go along for the ride, at least for a while. She was about to suggest a safe word— _peat moss_ being a favorite, but there was also _Tory cabinet,_ _Tofurkey bucket,_ or the classic _sticky wicket_ —when Caroline got seriously distracted by checking texts on her mobile and ended up calling someone named Beverly to inform said individual that “the cross-check procedure was completed successfully and the tertiary phase of the operation can proceed apace as soon as the final preliminaries are in place.” Gillian had no fucking idea what any of it meant but thought that if no part of the operation, procedure, or cross-check involved spending a considerable amount of time between those mad bitch’s perfect thighs she would be driven to the extremities of drink and/or shagging Ollie, which meant she would actually have to engage in the most rudimentary and barest of verbal preliminaries with him and that was enough to prompt her to reconsider and recast seven lagers and her trusty vibrator as Plan B. Thus she arrived at the satisfactory and quasi-logical conclusion that shagging this woman would be, in fact, a preventative measure toward saving her liver. It had nothing to do with those stunning legs or the wicked sway of her hips or the tantalizing hint of cleavage or her lovely, sparkling eyes or her beautiful, thick hair and Gillian decides right then and there that if necessary she will have to throw herself on either Caroline’s tender mercies or, even better, her pillowy bosom, a bosom worthy of rooting around in as if one were a pig in search of truffles.

And now on top of everything else, she is hungry for truffles.

Finally, Caroline puts the mobile down and deigns to speak directly to her. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

“I thought this was a date,” Gillian repeats.

“You thought this was a date? Don’t be insane.”

“Oh, _I’m_ being insane.”

“This is a _pre-date_ interview. Standard procedure. I need to know if I can trust you. I mean, your father says that for a drunken slapper you’re very reliable, but I like to verify character through my own methodology.” Caroline looks out the window again. “You weren’t followed here, were you?”

“Who would be following me? Why are you worried about that?”

The questions are ignored.

“This is all pretty weird,” Gillian says. “Aren’t you concerned I’ll tell everyone about this?”

“I’m not particularly worried. Your lovely son tells me that with enough gin you blackout and completely forget things. He claims, for example, that you’ve forgotten you have a granddaughter.”

“Holy Christ, I have a granddaughter?”

Caroline shakes her head.

Gillian grins. “I’m kidding. Look, I like to take the piss with him. He thinks I’ve gone barmy, living alone on farm that innit farm anymore, you know?”

“You live on an abandoned farm?”

“Well, I got a couple sheep. They’re like, pets. Keep me company. Good listeners.”

Caroline frowns. “This conversation is depressing me.”

“Sorry. Pretty sure I can, um, do something that would cheer you up.” Gillian wiggles her eyebrows. “I mean, this is a bit kinky for a first date—”

“I told you, this isn’t a date. You need to be vetted. And stop complaining. You seemed rather keen to be tied up anyway.”

“You were standing in the doorway with a rope and a smile. What was I supposed to think?”

“You weren’t supposed to think. Until now.” Caroline puts on a pair of glasses and picks up a clipboard with a thick sheaf of paper attached to it. “So.” She draws a deep breath. “Shall we proceed? Let’s get started on the questions. Before we begin, however, is there anything you’d like to ask me?”

“Yeah. Two things, actually: Are you on any medication and if so, did you forget to take it today?”

“Oh, you are a cheeky monkey, aren’t you? No to both.” Caroline grabs a pen and scribbles something down. “Anything else?”

“Would you consider taking off your top? It would make this much more enjoyable for me.”

Caroline hesitates, which Gillian takes for a good sign. “Maybe later.” Her pen tap dances furiously on the clipboard. “Anything else?”

“Reckon not.”

“All right. Let’s begin. I’m told your husband died under mysterious circumstances.”

“Tractor fell on him.”

“Some suspicion was cast your way.”

“Yeah, sure, I tipped over a bloody tractor on him. Stupid coppers. Look, he was drunk, he wanted to ride the bloody tractor, I said, ‘don’t get on the bloody tractor, you knob,’ and he did, and he hit a boulder, and he fell off and it fell on him.”

“Reports were you didn’t seem too broken up about it.”

“Like I said, he was a knob.”

“Inconclusive.” Caroline makes another note. “Moving on. You slept with my ex-husband, correct?”

“Only because he has eyes like a sad, sad beagle puppy.”

Caroline sighs. “This is true. All right, I can’t really dock you any points for that.”

“Plus he wrote a sonnet about my Landy.” Gillian clears her throat. “‘From the white cliffs of Dover/to the lands where purple heath doth hover/nothing comes between the ranger/and her Land Rover.’”

“See, now—goddamn him, this infuriates me.” She slaps the clipboard down on the kitchen table. “That was all my idea—he wrote an epic cycle of poems about women and motor vehicles because I suggested the whole concept to him. He got an entire _chapbook_ out of it and a blurb from A.S. Byatt. I even gave him the title!”

“Which was?”

“ _You Are Never Ferrari From Me._ ”

“Well now. Can’t wait for the movie of that to come out. Shoulda hung on to him, Caroline.”

“You’re losing points for sarcasm. Now, next question—about all these other men trailing after you—that hairy bloke, for one—”

“Robbie. Ex-boyfriend. It’s all right, he’s harmless.”

“And then there’s the one who’s young enough to be your son.”

“Oh, piss off with you being judgmental. Let me tell you what I know about you: You’re still sleeping with your ex.” Gillian cackles with triumph at Caroline’s guilty look. “Yeah, your mum told me that one. Who’s losing points now, eh? And you’re probably grossly violating some code of the Dyke Handbook on top of it all.”

“You want to talk about losing points? You’ve just lost major points for using _that word,_ you hypocritical hobbit. Which leads us to the next question: What do you identify as?”

Gillian ponders this. She’s not really keen on labels, because she likes what she likes and unfortunately what she likes usually falls in a disagreeable spectrum between thick as a brick and batshit bloody crazy, and unfortunately Caroline Elliot is skewing dangerously into the latter end, dangerous because the crazy ones were always better in bed. “Equal Opportunity Lover.”

“Right. I’m marking you down as Marvin Gaye.”

“Thanks.” As Caroline writes down God knows what on the clipboard, her eyeglasses slide slowly down her nose in a suggestive fashion reminiscent to Gillian of a stripper gearing up to hump a greased pole. Helpless with desire she squirms in the chair and blurts out “sticky wicket” in a desperate attempt to bring herself back to her senses.

Caroline looks at her. “What?”

“Nothing.” Gillian relents. “Look. Caroline.”

This time when Caroline looks at her, the expression is surprisingly gentle.

“If you’re in trouble with something—well, maybe I can help.” Gillian shrugs. “I mean, why else are you taking weird phone calls and looking out the window and acting like I’m following you, and people are following me—I’ve got nothing to hide from you.”

“I don't know, Gillian, I don't know.” Sighing, Caroline riffles through through the papers on the clipboard. “You're sort of high risk, high reward. And the Yelp reviews are a bit mixed.”

“Yelp?” Gillian frowns. “I'm on Yelp?”

“Well, you are a leading service provider in your, er, area of expertise, it seems.” Caroline gives her an earnest look. “Shall I read you some reviews?” She flips to the relevant pages.

“Oh Christ.”

“Ah. Let's see, here's one: ‘Keeps the minge to a minimum.’” Caroline nods approvingly. “That's encouraging.”

Gillian shrugs modestly. “Well, it's not a bloody topiary down there but it's well maintained.”

“But then there’s this, which is a bit mixed: ‘Nice ass, really good stamina but fell asleep right after so that I could not tell her all my hopes and dreams and that crushed my soul flatter than a shite pancake.’” Disapprovingly, Caroline purses lips before continuing. “Also, this: ‘Worst overnight guest ever.’” She pauses. “I should inform you that ‘night’ is spelled n-i-t-e and ‘guest' is spelled g-e-s-t and it's all in caps and punctuated with”—Caroline counts carefully—“seven exclamation points.”

Gillian's sighs. “Fucking Ollie.”

“The review in full: ‘Smoked all my weed and ate special Roquefort cheese I was saving for my mum's birthday tea. Came too loudly and scared neighbor's disabled Corgi.’” Caroline puts down the clipboard. “So you see, my results are inconclusive and I’m at loss at how to proceed.” She removes her glasses and places them atop the clipboard.

“Well, you could at least—help me raise my Yelp rating?” Gillian tries looking demure and helpless, as she knows women are trained to do, even though she knows when she usually attempts this expression it looks as if she’s had a brain injury.

Luckily Caroline, absorbed in a moral dilemma, doesn’t notice. She leans against a wall, folds her arms, looks terribly thoughtful. “You mean be—” Here, as if weighing a troubling, life-altering decision, she pauses tremblingly. “—altruistic?”

“Well y’know, Ayn Rand, it would be to your big fat fucking benefit too.”

“Nice literary allusion.”

“I’m not completely stupid,” Gillian retorts—and it is true, at least to the extent that she will never confess to having watched all of the _Atlas Shrugged_ movies.

“Didn’t think so,” Caroline says gently. “So. I have one final question.”

Gillian waits for it. And waits. Until finally, with a suggestive roll of her hips, Caroline moves. Slowly she struts across the room toward Gillian, each step measured and precise and each click of her heels puncturing the expansive silence between them, a gently explosive prelude like the pulled trigger of a gun. When at last she arrives at her apparent destination, which is standing in front of Gillian, she raises and adjusts her skirt ever so slightly so that she can comfortably straddle and sit in Gillian’s lap. The sudden heat and proximity of her makes Gillian delirious, and it gets even worse when Caroline drapes her arms around Gillian’s shoulders. She is so close that their lips are scant inches apart, and Gillian can smell her perfume, her sweat, the wine on her breath, and if she’s not mistaken maybe even cheese—well, unless she was eating Wotsits. She might eat Wotsits. Everybody likes those. Gillian’s mind crumbles, Wotsit-like, into freefall.

“Final question: Do you think,” Caroline says slowly, “you can removed my stockings and my underwear with your teeth—and nothing but your teeth?”

Before she can even answer the final question, Gillian gets kissed rather soundly and for what seems several long wonderful minutes, as the impatient Caroline proffers a very handsome down payment on the evening’s activities to sweeten the deal.

Finally, Gillian comes up for air and breathlessly manages a question of rhetorical outrage. “What kind of rank amateur do you take me for?”

 


	7. ball gags yes, quantum physics no

Yes, dear readers, our esteemed ovineophile and oenophile heroine Gillian Greenwood is, as stated boldly in her own words, no rank amateur. But despite her blithe confidence she was not prepared in full for the evening’s activities, even though after Round One she had a nap (peeling off those stockings with her teeth did take a remarkable amount of dexterity and energy, and resulted in cramped neck muscles), and Round Two ended with a snack consisting of avocado toast with pink sea salt and organic olive oil provided by her charmed companion, and even though Gillian protested at first because it resembled baby shit on sourdough but was astonished to discover it actually tasted good, and despite all this agreeability a bracing argument about what kind of wine would pair best with avocados followed and served as a surprising form of foreplay because Caroline did so love to argue. 

 

But as Round Three commences, Gillian has the magnificent control freak at her command. She is on top of the world, looking down on creation, and the only explanation she can find is that she is prone to certain euphoric moments of life being soundtracked by the Carpenters (this includes a threesome with Swedish twins where a nearby depressive neighbor was playing “Rainy Days and Mondays” on a loop and ever since then neither rainy days nor Mondays got our Gillian down, at least not in the sad, mopey sense of the word). Rather, the delirious reality of the current situation is that she is on top of the glorious Oxford bitch and riding the hell out of her. Caroline appears to enjoy this because, in between all the kissing and groping and nuzzling and neck biting she is moaning and writhing quite a bit and Gillian thinks it’s all going rather smashingly but it is about to become abundantly clear that Caroline Elliot is, as certain informative websites would put it, a bossy bottom. 

 

Caroline breaks off a kiss. “Wait.”

 

Dismayed, Gillian puts a halt to sexual multitasking. “What? Is something wrong?”

 

“Do you like University Challenge?”

 

“You mean—the show on telly?” It seems a hell of a time to go over likes and dislikes, and she quickly prepares a canned response of _I like sunsets and long walks on the beach and taking baths by candlelight_ to expedite this quasi-dating ritual that has strangely popped up at such a crucial moment during shagging. Given that she spent the better half of an evening tied up and answering some really nosy questions, she should not be surprised that Caroline would not follow any kind of normalized romantic or sexual protocol. 

 

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

 

“Well.” Gillian ponders this. “Who doesn’t enjoy seeing a pack of smug young shits humiliated on a regular basis?”

 

“I suppose that’s a yes?” Caroline asks hopefully.

 

“I suppose there’s a reason why you’re bringing this up now.” 

 

“I thought it might be fun to pretend we’re—”

 

Gillian’s excitement gets the best of her: “A nun and a sailor trapped in an elevator?”

 

“Uh, no.”

 

“Runaway Australian schoolgirls who discover a secret lesbian sex dungeon in Monica Bellucci’s vacation house on Lake Como?” 

 

“That’s a good one,” Caroline concedes. “Maybe I’ll take that under consideration—”

 

“I do a great Australian accent.”

 

“And I bet you would do a great Australian—”

 

“Yes! How about Cate Blanchett,” Gillian interrupts, “in an elevator, dressed like sailor. Or a schoolgirl. I can be flexible.” 

 

Caroline sighs. “That’s not exactly what I want.” 

 

“All right,” Gillian says. “Tell me.” She relents because Caroline is so perfectly beautiful and disheveled and approaching a kind of wanton sex goddess status that right now that she will do anything for this woman—even watch those bloody Ayn Rand films again. Especially when those magnificent legs are wrapped ever so tightly around her, and those shiny blue eyes crowned with ever-widening pupils retain such a glazed stare on Gillian as if she were some phantasmagorical seven-layer Victoria sponge cake made by angels and Caroline were herself the queen of cake heaven, Mary Berry. 

 

“Let’s pretend we’re contestants on University Challenge,” Caroline whispers.

 

It sounds as exciting as tea without whiskey or biscuits or sandwiches and in the company of one’s comatose great aunt. “God, you are weird.”

 

“Judgmental much?”

 

“No, it’s just—”

 

“Do you want a better Yelp rating or not?” 

 

“I do, but this is serious nerd territory. I’m not experienced in this. Ball gags yes, quantum physics no.”

 

For someone sweaty, naked, and pinned down by her wrists, Caroline still maintains her usual judgmental, infuriating hauteur as she demands, “Are you saying you are incapable of rising to the challenge, Gillian?”

 

The gauntlet—sadly only metaphorical, because there was the one time Gillian dressed up as a knight during a particularly satisfying role play—thus thrown down, Gillian accepts. “All right, all right. Sorry. Set the mood, then.”

 

“Our teams are competing against each other.”

 

“Uh huh.” 

 

“The score is tied after a thrilling bonus round when your team came from behind after a fifty-point deficit—” 

 

Bored already, Gillian rolls her eyes. “Wow, this is making me _so_ wet.”

 

“Oh, really? Well, your stupid fucking sarcasm is _really_ doing the trick for me. Now shut up and behave.” 

 

Gillian scowls and thinks of Cate Blanchett in a sailor suit. 

 

“It’s another bonus round. Questions on astrophysics. And after resisting my charms for the entire match you are finally so unnerved by my beauty, my mere presence, that you bungle a very basic question on neutron stars.” 

 

“Maybe I’ve bungled it because it’s so fucking dull I’ve fallen asleep.” 

 

“Be that as it may, you’re about to lose.”

 

“Oh, am I?” Gillian says in a dangerous tone. She doesn’t like to lose, nor does she possess a fondness for the super-twatty phrase _be that as it may._

 

“Yes, you are.”

 

“Yeah. See, I don’t think so.” Gillian shifts, releases one of Caroline’s wrists, slips her hand between their bodies, between those mighty thighs—and here she thinks she’s Indiana Jones breaching the temple of doom for the glittering ark of the covenant or maybe the holy grail or crystal skull or whatever—and enters Caroline, who moans with funky white-girl sweetness like a Roxy Music backup singer and then murmurs something that sounds like “sweet fancy Moses” while her heels dig into the mattress beneath her. 

 

“All right, sure,” Gillian continues, “I got one question wrong. But now it’s your turn.” 

 

Caroline manages a feeble protest. “Oh, no, no, not so fast.”

 

“Who says we’re gonna go fast? It’s another bonanzer round—”

 

This slows down the movement of Caroline’s hips as she struggles to regain her bitchy pedantic sensibility. “There no such thing as a ‘bonanza’ round, you twat.” 

 

“You have at least fifty questions to get through.”

 

“Stop making shit up.”

 

Gillian ceases all inter-thigh activity. “You want me to—stop?”

 

_“Oh dear God no.”_

 

“ _Be that as it may, then._ Your big fat fucking bonus bonanzer round is on film. Are. You. Ready. Caroline?”

 

The rhythm between them intensifies. 

 

“What?” Caroline manages to squeak. 

 

“Who was the cinematographer for the 1941 film _Citizen Kane_?”

 

“Oh—that’s not hard,” Caroline pants. “It’s that fat bloke—‘we will sell no wine before its time’—Orson. Welles.”

 

“Wrong! I said cinematographer, not director!”

 

“It’s not the same thing?” 

 

“No, you overeducated but culturally illiterate knobhead! It’s not the same thing! The correct answer is Gregg Toland! You’ve lost 50,000 points! I win!” 

 

“Oh—God.” Caroline claws at the sheets. The novel, liberating sensation of losing brings her ridiculously close to coming. 

 

“That’s right, Caroline! Oxford has been bested by—” Gillian pauses, and every word that follows is punctuated with a thrust toward ecstasy. “The—University—of—West—Scotland!” 

 

_“Oh God!”_

 

The sound of the orgasm peels through the night air, escapes the open bedroom window, tussles the top of the trees, sends the neighborhood cats scurrying for cover, prompts the local vicar to fall off the wagon again, causes a sandstorm in a remote section of the Gobi Desert, and in the nearby guesthouse prompts Celia Dawson to roll her eyes as she languishes in her bed next to her husband-to-be, who wisely wears a pair of headphones that transmit the soporific, dulcet drone of a BBC announcer discussing Victorian poetry.

 

Celia pokes Alan in the arm and yanks off his headphones. “She’s at it again,” she says accusingly, as if it were actually Alan’s fault—which, in an indirect way, it is, because he sired the slapper who was sapphically servicing her soon-to-be stepsister. 

 

“Told you to get headphones, love.” 

 

“You know, when she told me she was a lesbian I thought she would have sex possibly every seven years, like that pointy-eared alien fellow on _Star Tracks.”_

 

“Oh no,” Alan says. As he thoughtfully purses his lips Celia can tell he’s going into philosophical mode, and fortunately everything is still so new between them she is more charmed than irritated by these moments of bullshit that have been fostered by so many decades spent in pubs with similar men in possession of both too much time and lager on their hands. “I think with lesbians, it’s more like they’re a colony of bees. They enter a kind of sex frenzy in pursuit of a Queen they can never have.”

 

Celia looks skeptical. “And then they die?”

 

“That’s what telly always says.”

 

“Well if that’s true,” Celia says as she reaches for another glass of wine, “then I suppose we’d better let her have it off as much as possible.”


	8. a very sexy rubbish bin

If Gillian could skip through the streets of the town powered solely on the euphoric memory and afterglow of the night before, she would. But her knees are arthritic and she’s hungover, so she possesses the balance and grace of a bear on heroin which means she must settle for merrily fast-stomping her way to Starbucks whilst running into a parking meter and tripping over a terrier on this journey to caffeination. 

The local Starbucks is managed by the famed local alcoholic writer John Elliot, also Caroline’s ex and Gillian’s most recent sexual mistake. Under normal circumstances Gillian would avoid him like the plague, but given that his skill at preparing a macchiato far surpasses anything else he does in life, she reluctantly endures both his self-pitying monologues and perpetual hangdog expression that says _sleep with me or I shall slit my wrists._ Which, incidentally, is the title of his latest poetry chapbook and dedicated, as always, to his former wife: _To the bitch goddess of my heart._

As usual, he looks like death microwaved on the defrost setting and Gillian girds her loins for impromptu poetry recital and discourses on the filthy business of love. She smiles at him and realizes too late this is an egregious mistake; there is a nothing a writer detests more than a happy person. 

“You’re in a good mood today,” John accuses.

“Yeah,” Gillian says. “Good night’s sleep.”

“You look radiant, resplendent. An angel of the morning.”

“Did you write one of those sonnet thingys about me again? I’m flattered, but—I mean, I liked the one where you said my eyes were like psychedelic lanterns over an ocean of despair, although that line was bordering on being a bit too Jethro Tull, I dunno, kinda walks a fine line, dunnit?”

“Careful what you say about my muse. As I was saying, your skin is glowing.” 

“Sheep placenta is a great moisturizer.” 

“Oh, I don’t think it’s the moisturizer.” John leans across the counter, his grizzled unshaven face and dark fanatical eyes so close that Gillian has a flashback to the time she had to battle a determined and potentially rabid badger in the park with a rake (all while Harry watched from the truck and said it was just like a fight on _Game of Thrones_ —“House Badger versus House Slapper”) over the contents of a rubbish bin and if in this scenario John is the badger then that means Caroline is the bin—which doesn’t really work as a metaphor although she supposes Caroline is kind of like a rubbish bin, a very sexy rubbish bin, because at its best the bin can be a wonderful world of surprises. 

“Rather,” he continues, “I think it’s because my mad bitch ex-wife spent all night shagging you and, as she so callously informed me via text message, you set a personal best record of going down on her for an hour and fifteen minutes.” 

“Well,” Gillian says modestly, “it really wasn’t straight through, we had to take a break when I fell off the bed. Then she gave me a full body massage and made me a martini—”

“Must I have boundary issues with everyone?” he cries. “I mean, this was bad enough—” John pulls his mobile out of a pocket and holds it, revealing a dark blurry photo of Gillian with her head on the pillow, drooling contentedly in sleep, and with the caption TONIGHT’S UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE WINNER splayed across it. “Saved it from Snapchat last night,” he mumbles sheepishly.

Gillian fumes a tiny bit and supposes she would be angrier if she actually knew what Snapchat was.

John squints knowingly. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Well yeah. She photographed me at a really shitty angle, looks like I’ve got a double chin.” 

“Then there were copious texts praising your performance!” He screws up his face in a mask of agony as if Caroline were actually skewering him with a hot poker, a longtime goal that she came extremely close to fulfilling one Christmas Eve several years ago. “God I wish I could completely loathe that bitch but seriously, these are Haiku-like in the quality of their simplicity and beauty. Here’s one: ‘Good god almighty/She has the stamina of/A shore-leave sailor.’ See? It’s perfect. She writes poetry deliberately to torture me!” He slams down the mobile on the counter. “And she never let me win University Challenge! Eighteen bloody years and I never got to win once—not on Christmas, not on my birthday, not even on _Ted Hughes’s_ birthday!”

“Really?” Like Saul on the road to Damascus or a drag queen viewing _Valley of the Dolls_ for the first time, Gillian experiences a profound epiphany, a calling to a higher love, a spiritual urge toward a deep and abiding purpose in life that for once does not involve copious amounts of gin. 

John stares at her. “What the hell is wrong with you? You look like you did that time you saw those nude photos of Judi Dench.” 

“Wow.” Gillian grins stupidly. “She likes me!”

“Judi Dench likes you?”

“No, you knobhead. Caroline! She likes me! She really likes me!”

The dismal truth sets in. “Oh piss off, Sally Field. And get out.” He folds his arms. “No macchiato for you.”

Gillian pouts. “Well that’s truly petty, don’t you think?” 

“Why don’t you get Caroline to make you one, eh? Maybe first she’ll grease you down with organic jojoba oil and perform all 64 positions from the Kama Sutra on you.”

Thus Gillian’s second epiphany of the day. “That’s a really good idea! Thanks, mate!” 

As she triumphantly traipses out the door, John roars, “Your lifelong ban from Starbucks begins _now._ ”


	9. sweating, nausea, and compulsive composition of bad poetry

“Dildos,” Gillian says. 

Powering through Tesco, Caroline ignores her. She is on the hunt for the main ingredients that compose a Portuguese tripe stew that she believes will help her reclaim the affections of her estranged former fiancée. The only problem is that Caroline—hearing comprehension compromised after a bottle of cabernet and whilst listening to Prince’s _Under the Cherry Moon_ at top volume—mistook Kate’s proclamation of the most romantic meal she’d ever consumed as Portuguese tripe stew when in fact Kate had said “port and goat cheese, ripe, eaten amongst the morning dew”—a borderline twatty pronunciation that put her dangerously close to John territory save for the fact that Kate would never be so stupid as to actually publish her drunken pretentious mutterings.

Speaking of cheese, Gillian is noshing away on free Stilton samples that all but guarantee that the next person who kisses her will have an extremely unpleasant time of it. “Adjustable strap ons, of course. Butt plugs. Vibrators. Double-headed dildos. Anal beads, anal probes. Vibrators ranging in size from two inches to a foot. Vibrating silicone balls.” 

Caroline’s eyebrow twitches. “Is that your shopping list? You do realize you’re at Tesco and not Bed, Bath, and Bukkake?”

“Just giving you an overview of my sexual arsenal, so to speak.”

“Glad to hear you have the basics.”

“Also got a suit of medieval armor, milady.” 

“Why are you following me around?”

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Long-suffering Caroline sighs. “It’s not surprising. 86.3% of the people I’ve had sexual relations with have experienced similar withdrawal effects. I have a questionnaire that I like to give former lovers—well, I just gave one to Kate and she ripped it up and threw it in my face—but that was a really atypical, adverse reaction right there. The more common symptoms of sexual withdrawal from me are excessive sweating, nausea, and compulsive composition of bad poetry.”

Gillian considers this. “Well, I’m usually sweaty and nauseous on Tuesday because that’s curry day.”

“Poetry?”

“I love Tennyson.” 

“Jesus, that is _bad_.”

“It is bad. I’ve got it bad and that ain’t good—see, there’s poetry for you.”

“I will give you points for a proper allusion to a well-respected jazz standard.”

“Come on, I’m serious.”

“Serious about sex toys, apparently.”

“No, no. I’m serious about you.” Gillian seizes the shopping cart, blocking it with her body. “Give me a chance. I can prove it.”

“Your father says you are serious about nothing except gin and petitioning Russell Brand to do a remake of _Caddyshack._ ”

“I got fifty signatures already on change.org. Look, Caroline. I can prove it, really. To start, I sacrificed my regular coffee place for you.”

Dismissively, Caroline rolls her eyes. “You said John booted you out. You had no choice.”

“I haven’t slept with anyone else since the night we spent together.”

“All of seventy-two hours? That is a record for you.” Caroline wriggles the cart free from her human impediment and barrels on down an aisle of obscure canned goods.

“Stop right there!” Gillian shouts.

Caroline doesn’t stop but turns around quickly to bellow a defiant “No!”

That’s when Gillian drops the bomb: “ _I have cried in a pub over you._ ”

In pure shock, Caroline stops. This was serious. Dead serious. _Carol_ not getting a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards kind of serious. “No,” she whispers. “It can’t be.”

Gillian catches up to her and the cart. “Yes. It is.”

“I refuse to accept the veracity of that claim. You’re lying.”

“I have witnesses of varying stages of sobriety,” Gillian counters.

“It can’t be—”

“It can, and you know now you have no choice.” Gillian thrusts a finger in her face and enunciates it very carefully: “You know in Yorkshire terms, in the ancient ways of our people or at least stretching back to like 1952, this means _we are officially engaged_.”

Caroline slumps. “Shit." 

“Yeah. Think about it. Because if you want to break off the engagement, you know what we’d have to do.”

“I know, I know,” Caroline sighs.

To drive home the point, Gillian recites it anyway: “We’d have to go to a Terriers match, get seriously pissed, argue violently, make out with inappropriate bystanders, and one of us will have to attempt to strangle the other with a scarf, and _then_ the strangulee has to throw up on the strangler. There’s no other way to do it. I know you think otherwise of me but I’m actually quite a traditional girl.”

Things had been so much simpler with Kate, who was not of Planet Yorkshire, and only required a simple proposal with a string quartet, fifty doves, and said proposal recited in medieval Latin. Caroline can only surrender to the madness of her native land. “All right, fine.”

Gillian relaxes. “That sounds really passive-aggressive but I’ll take it.” 

“Get used to it.”

“Shall I set up our wedding registry at Bed, Bath, and Bukkake?”

“You’re filthy and disgusting and I want you so much right now I’d shag you in the car except my mother is waiting for me there.”

“Wow.” Gillian grins bashfully and shuffles awkwardly. “This is great. Dad’ll be so excited—this is like the closest thing to a normal relationship I’ve ever had with a human!”

Caroline watches her betrothed skip away and wisely opts not to pursue any line of questioning regarding Gillian’s level of intimacy pertaining to nonhumans, but she’ll be damned if she has to live with a sheep. “This is all normal?” she wonders aloud. All thoughts of Portuguese tripe stew abandoned, she stocks up on wine, cake, antacid tablets, and tampons and leaves the store.

In the car, Celia nips at a flask of scotch and mutters “about time” as Caroline and her purchases pile into the vehicle.

“Mum, I’ve got to tell you something. It’s important.”

“You’re not going back to men, are you? I don’t want to lose my senior parent of a homosexual discount at the cinema.”

“No.” Caroline takes a deep breath. “I’m engaged to someone who went to the University of West Scotland.”

“Are you talking about Gillian, dear? We know, we were at the pub when she let loose the waterworks. It was quite impressive but she did have about four pints so she was lubricated enough for tears and the jukebox was playing Patsy Cline, so your engagement was all but assured. You do know she’s taking the piss about the West Scotland thing?”

“Oh,” Caroline says, relieved. “So where did she go to university?”

Celia cackles. “She didn’t go to university, period!”

Caroline bangs her head against the steering wheel. Repeatedly.

“Cheer up, dear. It’ll be fine. I mean, yes, she’s a drunken slag with no future and no money, but Alan says she a natural at flower arranging, and that’ll save us some money for the wedding, you know.”

“But there’s Kate, mum. She might _still_ take me back.”

“Caroline, don’t you know?”

“What?”

“Kate’s gone.”

“Gone?” Caroline echoes helplessly. Her chest tightens. All breath leaves her body.

“Yes. Didn’t she tell you? She joined Greenpeace. Think she’s already set sail for Antarctica. She said it would be a marvelous opportunity for writing an orchestral suite based on whale music. I daresay the baby will fit right in, won’t it? A mix of black and white, just like the penguins down there.”

In lieu of murder, shouting, or any other socially unacceptable behavior, Caroline merely pinches her brow so severely she gives herself a headache. “Mum?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Are you absolutely certain I was not adopted?”


	10. honeymoon in colorado

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of sad it takes me nearly a year to write a crackfic. But there you have it, just in time for the holidaze, friends.

 

“So we can’t get married at the pub?”

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

“Farm, maybe?”

 

“No.”

 

Gillian sulks.

 

“And your sheep cannot be the maid of honor.”

 

“You’re a real hard ass,” Gillian says.

 

They are in Caroline’s Jeep Cherokee, deep in the wildest and most remote territory of the park. When Caroline had suggested going for a drive, Gillian was fairly certain the outcome would be either sex or death; while she fervently hoped for the former, the latter, given Caroline’s mysterious behavior and unpredictable temperament, was also a distinct if minuscule option. Nevertheless, Gillian also possesses a sturdy confidence in her ability to survive catastrophe. If she can survive watching all those Ayn Rand films in one sitting, she can survive a potential lesbian serial killer. Additionally, Caroline seems to have a low tolerance for messiness and no doubt Gillian would bleed copiously all over her pretty Jeep, so perhaps murder is indeed off the table.

Perhaps this is some lesbian mating ritual, shagging in the forest. Should’ve brought the strap-on, Gillian thinks.

Caroline intrudes on these musings: “Told you, get used to it.” She takes a set of binoculars out of a backpack and raises them to her eyes. “You’re just lucky I’m not making you stop drinking.”

 

“’Cause that means you’d have to stop too.”

 

“You catch on fast, darling.”

 

“You gonna tell me why we’re here? And what’s with the binoculars?”

 

“I need to tell you the truth about me.”

 

“I know you’re not a natural blonde. Rug don’t exactly match the curtains, ya know.”

 

“Gillian.”

 

“All right, future Mrs. Greenwood. What’s up?”

 

“I don’t really run an organic fruit stand. I’m actually a highly trained scientist working with British intelligence to prove the existence of time travel. In this particular case that I’m investigating, we are tracking the movements across the time/space continuum of a particular stegosaurus, a _stegosaurus stenops_ of the late Jurassic era that we believe has been sighted by others in locations as diverse as Colorado and Japan.”

 

“A stegosaurus.”

 

“Correct.”

 

“Time travel.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Colorado.”

 

“I’ve never been, but I hear it’s quite lovely. Perhaps we could honeymoon there.”

 

A fleeting moment of despair overwhelms Gillian’s hormones. She buries her face in her hands and moans, “Just please tell me what medication you’re on already.”

 

“I’m not on any medication. While I may indulge in recreational use of peyote, it’s only to get through Sunday teas with my mother. And speaking of tea, Ricky should show up right about now since it’s tea time and he likes to pop ’round then, and it should be here, if I’ve done my calculations accurately—”

 

“Ricky?”

 

“The stegosaurus.” Caroline lowers the binoculars and smiles wistfully. “That’s what I’ve named him.”

 

Gillian sighs. “Quite a new sensation, this.”

 

“What?”

 

“Being the sane one in the relationship.”

 

“It has its benefits.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Well, if you take your pants off right now, I might be able to get you off before Ricky shows up.”

 

Gillian’s moment of anguish dissipates. “You mean you’d actually consent to sex in a Jeep Cherokee?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“God,” Gillian says, voice aquiver with unabashed worship, hope, longing, and idiotic love. “You really _are_ perfect.”

 

Caroline sighs contentedly. “I know.”

 

They lived happily ever after. And so did Ricky.


End file.
